Growth markets and software drive up the company's profits

IBM said Tuesday that net income for the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31 rose 9 percent to $5.3 billion year over year, helped by strong performance in growth markets as well as software and mainframe sales. Revenue for the quarter was $29 billion, a 7 percent increase.

"We completed an outstanding year, with record profit and free cash flow, and exceeded the high end of our 2010 earnings per share roadmap objective," said IBM CEO Samuel J. Palmisano in a statement. "We also capped a decade in which our shift to high-value businesses, our global integration of IBM, our investment in research and development of almost $60 billion and our acquisition of 116 companies have helped us to nearly triple our EPS and return more than $100 billion to shareholders."

Fourth-quarter revenue grew 9 percent in the Americas to $12.2 billion, but fell 2 percent in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa to $9.5 billion. Revenue in the Asia-Pacific region climbed 14 percent to $6.6 billion.

Software sales in the quarter increased by 7 percent to $7.0 billion. Within that segment, WebSphere middleware sales were up 32 percent, but Lotus software sales dropped 3 percent, suggesting IBM is having trouble against competing collaboration software from the likes of Microsoft.

Business analytics-related revenue remained strong, growing 19 percent across both software and services, IBM said. IBM's recently acquired Netezza data-warehousing technology, which competes with Oracle's Exadata machines, "got off to a strong start this quarter," Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge said during a conference call.

Systems and Technology revenue totaled $6.3 billion, up 21 percent, spurred in part by strong System z mainframe server sales, which jumped 69 percent year over year. IBM launched a new System z product last year. System x sales were up 18 percent, while Power Systems revenue grew 2 percent.